Best Regards From Hell
by chiavaso
Summary: As a child, he was fond of wandering in the woods, but the woods are a dark place full of old things better left untouched. Children though, have to be burned in order to learn. When the boy grows up, he starts to look back at the woods where, unbeknownst to him, he stirred something in the dark. Derek/Stiles; Scott/Allison; Lydia/Jackson; Erica/Boyd.
1. Prelude

Circling the trapped beta in slow, deliberate circles, the little human's heart pattered inside his chest with a quick, irregular rhythm that the wolf couldn't identify. Bristling, every charcoal hair standing on edge, quivering in the chilly autumn evening air, the wolf fought down his growls, eyes trained to the little boy who had come to stand still before him, mere inches away. A slight breeze danced between them, enough to cause the child to shiver but not enough to stir the circle of mountain ash entrapping the beast. Goosebumps rippled across the child's exposed skin, riddling the pale flesh with pockets of shadows and the boy shivered as the temperature dropped minute by minute. Bending down, snout close to the ground, the wolf let out a small wheeze. The sun was going down. If the child froze to death the wolf would never escape, but if he were to die there, he could only hope it was before the hunters came.

Unfamiliar footsteps would send the boy crashing through the trees until he found one big enough to hide behind, but the sounds would draw his attention and eventually the curiosity would be too much. Those brown, too large for his tiny face eyes would peer out from behind the bark. By then there would be only blood smeared along the forest floor, crystalizing in the leaves, soaking into the already dark soil, and the broken body of slashed open fur and exposed bones would fasten itself to the insides of the boy's eyelids. Pink tongue lolling uselessly from the corner of a gaping mouth riddled with sharp teeth, the wolf would be unable to send the child away. Those kinds of nightmares were the kind that never went away.

Another whine escaped the wolf.

The boy, eyes large, knelt onto his knees and crawled toward the beast slowly, fingers ripping apart the leaves with every crunch of contact, knees darkening from the still moist fall soil. With each intake, the air made his lungs ache. It slithered down his throat like a frost faerie, whispering as it went, leaving frost on his teeth and throat. Coughs wracked his tiny frame so hard he had to pause, centimeters from the ring of ash cresting the ground in the perfect circle the wolf had stumbled into. The child sat back, gasping for air, and the wolf knelt again, whining. Every muscle in his body trembled like a violin string, the tension stretching him thin, his only chance at survival a fast fading light in the body of a frail child whose heart pattered faster than it should be able to. For a moment the boy reminded the wolf of a rabbit, panicked and paralyzed. A little growl crawled out of his throat like a soul forcing its way from purgatory, hesitating at the teeth long enough to be snapped up and tossed back into the chasm of the belly, but the child heard anyway.

Those large eyes were impossibly wide and a fog curled out from behind the child's lips, a testament to the chill becoming much more than that. Fighting down the urge to howl, the wolf brought his head close to the child's face, as close as it could get with the ash ring, so close that each huff stirred the boy's hair and warmed his face, so close that the wolf's eyes filled up the boy's vision. Something about their blue drew the child closer.

_Break the circle._

Fingers long even then, trembling with only the brief moment of hesitation, the child's hand hovered over the ash in the fading dusk and the wolf whined when the world seemed to pause, as if taking a breath, before suddenly he was compelled forward. The ash parted, just a tiny slit, but it was enough. The wolf lunged over the line and drew up short to throw back his head and let out a howl that made no sound, but the child trembled from it all the same. Panic oddly absent, he struggled to his feet. His companion's head dropped and his ears went up, listening for the hunters, keeping check on the frantic patter of the boy's heart thumping like a bird in a cage. It wouldn't be too long before the hunters caught up with them. Whining low in his throat, the wolf turned to fix the child with those eyes like frost.

It wasn't safe. The child was rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, and failing fast in the cold that marched upon them intending to lay siege. Jaws parting to allow his tongue to loll, the wolf cocked his head. The little boy took a shaky step forward, knee giving out at the last second but then suddenly the beast was there, allowing him to wrap his tiny fingers in his fur and nipping him on in encouragement. While the fur might have looked coarse, it was softer than anything the boy had ever touched, except, perhaps, his mother's hair.

They found a hollow in the gnarled roots of an old tree that the wolf did not like. Whining and dancing on his paws, he looked about, desperate for anything else except that old tree, the one that rose up like a creature from the dark, ready to swallow them whole, its bark nearly black and twisted, broken as if something had tried to tear it apart and failed. The scars were white against its cracked skin and the branches spread out over the top, curling like vines. Nothing grew around the tree. Even the soil was pale and dry, refusing to soak up an ounce of moisture, and around the tree grew no grass except for the purple flowers that stung. Growling low in his throat, the wolf knew the hunters would not follow them there, to that gateway into the darkness. The child too, seemed to sense the canine's reluctance.

Yipping, the wolf nudged the little boy toward the hollow, nipping when necessary to get the child moving. Night was almost upon them and there was nowhere else. It wasn't safe, but there was nowhere else. The child touched either side of the opening as he stumbled inside and his fingers came away wet, dripping with sap so dark it was almost crimson and while the wind moaned outside, the hollow was almost perfectly silent. Only the child's own heart and the wolf's breathing interrupted the quiet.

The beta circled around once, twice, thrice in the small center and then settled, nose tucked carefully into his paws and covered by his tail. Blue eyes blinking owlishly despite himself, he glanced up at the little human who swayed on his tiny feet, reaching out to steady himself on the trunk and leaving dark smears on the frightening pale inside. Feeling his heart constrict, the wolf let out a low rumble. When the child looked down at him, wide-eyed, the wolf flicked his tail and stretched out a little so the child, when he crawled forward, could curl up with him. When morning came, the wolf was gone and the little boy stumbled out into the arms of his father, unaware that a pair of blue eyes regarded him curiously from the trees.

The little boy didn't go back to the forest after that, not the next day, nor the next, and it was many years before the wolf saw him again.


	2. Here, at the End of Things

Smoke curls around the charred remains of broken glass and twisted metal, tiny patches of fire flickering as they cling to life in tiny pools of spilled gasoline. There's an awful lot of commotion. People stream from the backs of ambulances, out of cop cars, and all he can do is watch their faces contort. A distant, quiet part of him registers they're shouting. Words filter out of their open mouths but he can't hear a single sound, not even the sirens that he knows are filling the night up with their wails, and all he can do is stare at the wreckage. It looks like something out of a slasher film.

Before he comprehends it, he's on his feet. Everything around him swims, his chest aches, his body is trembling, but he's moving toward the car with a senseless compulsion to wrench open the door and look inside. All he wants to do is just look. Arms reach out to stop him, but he pushes them away and drags his numb limbs closer because he has to see—he needs to. That's his mother in there. It's the first corpse he's seen, which makes it different somehow, and he knows then and there that he'll never forget the way her fingers curled outward, stretching for the space he occupied before he was thrown from the car. There's just so much blood. Body aching, he stumbles, fingers ghosting across the ground in an effort to catch his balance.

Then, for one second strong, warm arms are encircling him, and in the next something in him snaps. Chest constricting like he can't pull in enough oxygen, heart fluttering like at any second it will burst, and he goes from sprawling prone on the ground to his feet in less than seven seconds. It only takes a few more before he bolts. The sound of his father calling after him chase him into the woods but as his legs carry him farther from the scene, trembling from the effort to tear away from the horror he can't bear to stare down, the sounds fade behind him until he's so deep into the middle of the woods he stops suddenly because he has no idea where he is. A howl, frail but unwavering lifts into the air. The human lifts his head up to the sky, listening with closed eyes that snap open when the sound is cut off suddenly, only to resume moments later.

Something familiar seems to call out to him and he takes a step forward, unable to shed the image of a broken body, pale skin stretched until it frayed and bones that must have creaked until they snapped, and he twists around at the sound of a thin howl that threads through the trees. A tiny exhale escapes his lips as he stares into the growing darkness. In the gathering quiet he recognizes the sound: it's anguish. Anguish laced with warning and suddenly all he can think about is the hunters, men in dark clothes and bright buckles with serious faces, and the smell of gunpowder. What he remembers of that night can be summed up in a bone-deep chill and the crack of bullets biting into bark.

The memories come and go in disjointed flashes but he remembers those blue eyes like he'll never forget them, the desperation and trust in them charred into the back of his eyelids because a part of him thinks it was a wolf, but another part of him shakes it off because wolves haven't lived in California for so long he wouldn't be surprised if nobody recognized one if they saw it trotting down the street.

Right up until he finds himself in the center of a tiny clearing, although it's less of a clearing and more of a dead-zone where nothing seems to be able to grow, he doesn't remember that he hasn't stopped walking. The claustrophobia and denial that drove him from the road is still going full-force. Even when he realizes he hasn't stopped, and he tries to think about doing so, his chest constricts with terror even though that doesn't make sense because there's nothing around to hurt him, but he's terrified that if he stops somehow the body in the wreck will rise up behind him. If he stops moving, it will devour him. The call comes again, more insistent this time. There's a shape twisting in and out of the trees, dark and impossibly large, and he thinks maybe he sees a flash of blue.

A warm surprise fills him when a wolf peers out of the trees, nose in the air, nostrils flaring, and looks at him with perked ears and a gently wagging tail. The beta slips out into the clearing with a grace the boy thinks he'll never match, and comes to nip at his trembling fingers. The whine the wolf lets out is low and something in the boy twists. It feels like a blade jammed between his ribs. Reaching out to tangle his fingers in the thick fur of the beta is what makes him realize he's trembling from top to toes but doesn't know why.

Those blue eyes tear into him and he finds himself stumbling forward, surprising the wolf enough that it steps back and bares its teeth at him, not snarling, just startled, and the teenager lets out a low sound before sinking to his knees. That's his mother's body in the crash. That's her corpse that he won't ever forget. A cold nose nudges at his face and he wonders when he let it lower when suddenly his vision is filled with that blue, which honestly isn't the wolf's most striking feature, but it's the one that sticks with him the most. The most memorable might be how it hasn't eaten his face off yet, he thinks. As if sensing his trail of thought, the beta snaps at him in a manner almost playful, nipping at him until he's on his feet again and the faint thread of a memory wisps across his mind.

It isn't safe in the woods.

He leans close to the wolf's muzzle and says, "I don't want to go home. I can't, my… she's…"

As if it understands, the beta gives a tiny nod and leads him, yipping, nipping, pulling, and prancing to a familiar tree in the center of a quiet, empty glade devoid of everything except the giant tree. Crunching unpleasantly beneath his feet, even the grass is dead. No flowers grow around the hollow in the trunk and it somehow seems just as massive to him as it did back then, when he was nearly halved in height. It is the only safe place because nothing else is stupid enough to rest within it. When he crawls inside the wolf follows him, curling up near the entrance with its snout facing out, nostrils flaring as if it expects something horrible to happen. The human watches, wondering what it would be like to live like that, constantly afraid of death.

He doesn't know when he drifts off, but when he wakes up, he does so alone. The hollow is smaller than he remembers, seemingly worn smooth and he's not sure how they both managed to fit inside. He can't even be sure he didn't dream it all up.

The sheriff is at the table when the boy opens the front door as silently as he can; the man's face is in his hands, fingers splayed across his eyes to hide what looks like tears making their way down the rugged despair etched into every line and crease that was already there and has formed since. A half-empty bottle of Jack and a full shot glass sit momentarily untouched on the table. The sheriff—his _father_—heaves a sigh that he never really lets go of. It hangs in the air, stuck in his throat like a pill he can't bring himself to swallow, and rather than exhale he chooses to choke out a low sob. It's followed by only a few more, but it's a few too many.

"Stiles?" the man looks up to the empty archway, not even bothering to scrub the sadness off his face.

Frozen against the stairs, his heart hammering away in his chest, he holds his breath and prays his father won't hear him because he's not sure he can bear to look him in the eyes. Honestly, he's surprised the man's even home. Stiles shuffles past the archway, trying to be as quiet as possible, he wonders when he stopped thinking in terms of dad, or pops, or father, and thinks maybe it's because the man at the table doesn't look anything like the man who raised him anymore, so he turns and crawls up the steps on his hands and knees. It takes him a long time to get up when he reaches his door. The handle looms above him dauntingly and he's too exhausted to reach up for it, so he leans his back against it and rests his head on his knees and listens to the silence in the study.

When, two hours later, the sheriff opens his son's door quietly to see if he's come home the man stands in the frame for a little while, watching his son's sides move faintly with the gentle rhythm of sleep. It starts then, Stiles thinks later, the rift that slowly opens up between them. It starts when the sheriff doesn't come into the room and sit at the foot of his boy's bed, doesn't reach out and touch his hair and tell him he's loved and it's going to be alright; it starts when the man turns and shuts the door behind him like he was never there at all.

Wide awake, Stiles tries to muffle the sounds of his sobs because it isn't his father who's pulling off his shoes next door. It's a stranger and there's a hole in his heart now, big enough for two people, and for the first time he wants to scream at his mother for taking his father with her. He wants to plead, cry, yell, or just do whatever it takes to get him back. Instead the silence comes up through the floorboards and consumes him.

The next morning it's on the news: the Hale house came down around their ears in the middle of the night, and out of the ten, sometimes twelve people who occupied it, three made it out alive.

Stiles sits on the couch with his knees pulled up, a mug of tea in his hands, wonders what it's like to die and doesn't go to school that day, or the next, until the school calls his father at work and the sheriff comes home to pack his son's backpack and manhandle him into the car. They don't speak when Stiles shoves open the cruiser door and walks through the school's front doors with a bent head. Gruesome deaths are usually front-page news, and he's thankful that even Jackson leaves him alone even though it's already been a week. The other teenager claps him on the back in passing and moves on, head tilted back because he's laughing at something Danny has said, and they grin at each other like it's all their world is made up of, and when Lydia sashays over to them with that brilliant smile of hers, Stiles turns away from them.

Everything is too bright, too clean, too noisy, and sweat is dripping down his forehead when he pushes open the bathroom door, fumbles with the stall latch, drops his bag, and hurls up the pathetic excuse for a breakfast he forced into himself that morning. Scott doesn't come to school. His dad left two days ago and he's waiting for him to come home, even though his mother pleads with him in a voice that sounds like her world's collapsing inward, and when Stiles' visit transforms into a last minute sleepover, she doesn't even complain.

Stiles stares up at the ceiling and brushes a hand through Scott's hair, focusing on the sensation of his friend's breathing, the heat of his breath on Stiles' clavicles, the minute spasms his muscles go through as he dreams, and forces himself to breathe deeply. The moon is full outside the window and he can hear an unanswered howl tearing up the sky.

Blue eyes flash through his mind and he wonders if the world is ending.

His father speaks at the funerals, both of them, praising the central axes of two different families like he knew both of them just as well as the other and his son sits quietly, eyes vacant, mind working a mile-a-minute, and outwardly as unmovable as a large landform, possibly a mountain, his hands gripped into fists so tight his knuckles were white. Next to him sits a person he has never met in his entire life and their sister. The two Hale siblings have unconsciously mimicked the way he's sitting without really being there, or maybe it's just something that people going through grief do. Stiles isn't really sure, but before he can come up with the answer he's revisiting the crash and the way his mother's blood spilled across her lips and how he'll never forget what a stomach ripped open by glass looks like. He doesn't even know he's begun to panic until both of his hands are in the grasp of the siblings. Laura has moved to his other side and she grips his hand like he'll be swallowed up by the earth if she lets go, and while her brother doesn't hold quite as tightly, his hand is large and covers Stiles' almost completely.

The physical contact takes a moment to sink in and then Stiles twists his hands until he's clutching at Laura just as desperately as she is him, and his fingers are threaded through her brother's loosely, there and comforting in just the mere presence, and the funeral proceeds on around them. Stiles takes a moment to study Laura. Deep brown eyes stare ahead and her shoulders are squared solidly, the picture of strength and if she wasn't trembling, Stiles might have thought she were simply there for moral support for someone else's tragedy. Her hair was long and almost black, falling around her shoulders like a waterfall, framing her face and high cheekbones. On his other side, the brother sat forward with shoulders slumped rather than hunched, and there was despair etched in every line he was too young to have already.

"Is there any other family that would like to speak?" the sheriff leveled his eyes on his son, silently pleading for him to stand up and replace his father at the podium, but Stiles couldn't. Cold and rooted in place, he stared back at his father resolutely.

There was no way he was standing up and leaving the Hales to fend for themselves and, after a moment, his father must have seen it because he turned to the crowd and stared at across it for a long period of silence, coming back to himself suddenly and stepping down without another word. Rather than come and sit with Stiles, he sat a few seats away from the children. Licking his lips, Stiles can almost feel the rift between them widen as the man stares at his hands desperately, eyes wide and searching as if they have the answer he's looking for. Something like disgust tastes bitter in the back of his mouth. Laura's brother squeezes Stiles' fingers.

"Don't be so hard on him," Laura says with a voice that is ragged and horrible, "he lost her too."

Her brother doesn't say anything but he nods absently in agreement and Stiles tries really, really hard to resent them, but then he remembers their uncle in the hospital with a body and mind so burned up it's all he can do to breathe and he finds that resentment just doesn't have a place to settle.

In retrospect, the funeral and wake are both absolutely beautiful, and there should have been some kind of solace in the fact that everyone in the audience is just as lost as the families are, that there isn't a single dry eye around, but it does nothing to quell the empty ache in Stiles' chest and he has a sneaking suspicion that it does nothing for the Hale siblings either, both of whom look far too ragged and sad to even pretend that they're okay, but they do. Laura smiles and speaks softly with well-wishers and accepts the condolences with a somber face. Her brother is short with everyone, curt and hard, all sharp angles and a fragile state of mind, and to Stiles he doesn't speak at all, but the boy thinks it has more to do with the fact that he doesn't engage the Hale with words because really, what can you say to someone who's lost their entire world? Later, once her brother has wandered off to stare forlornly at the woods, Laura thanks Stiles and tells him that his name is Derek and yes, he's always been like that, which prompts an unexpected snort from the boy. It surprises both of them and then Laura's face goes lax, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"Stiles?" the sheriff stumbles on the word, like he's forgotten.

It makes his son flinch just to hear it. Laura takes the man aside and speaks to him in low tones that Stiles can't make out but it doesn't matter to him, he likes her, and Derek hasn't moved from where he's ignoring the world and staring out into the woods like the sheriff stared at his hands, and it makes the teenager a little sick to see. Sticking his hands into his pockets, he wanders over to the older boy. Coming to stand next to him he doesn't say anything, just stands there, trying to see what Derek must see out there and leans back when he feels the boy relax into him a little.

Stiles wonders if the world is ending.


	3. Wolves in the Woods

Laura and her brother (whose name the younger boy only discovers a few hours later around the Stilinski dinner table, minus one plus two) have dinner with them when the sheriff remembers that he has yet to properly introduce everyone. It comes into his eyes like light and then fades immediately after. Glancing away from the expectant children gathered around him, he stares at the hardwood table listlessly, searching for the answers of the universe in its cracked grains, before pushing his chair back. Stiles watches him go and doesn't remind him he hasn't even touched his salad. Laura watches the youngest watch the oldest, something in her gaze that Derek doesn't understand, and something tells him he doesn't want to.

Eventually they all return their gazes to their hands: Stiles' splay across the table as if to help push him up; Laura's clasp neatly in her lap, sadness etched in every pocket of skin; Derek's fist by his sides like he would take on the world if only it would challenge him. They stare as hard as they can and listen to the silence seep up through the floorboards. It's a long time before anyone moves, but once Laura lets out a determined sigh and pushes her chair back, purpose in every scrape, and collects the plates the other two follow her.

Derek stands before Stiles does and waits for him, staring at the boy as if he'll vanish into thin air at any second. It feels nice, Stiles decides, and pushes his chair in. Derek copies him after a moment, clearly at a loss, and follows him into the kitchen where Laura has turned the faucet on and begun the dishes. Stiles tells her she doesn't have to do them, she's a guest. Wiping slow circles around a plate, Laura says it's nice to have something to do. Dishes keep her hands busy. Nodding a little jerkily, Stiles stands there and watches her hands move, trying to squash the way it reminds him of his mother and how she would stand there and stare out the window at something Stiles could never see.

Warmth pools in Stiles' back and he realizes that Derek is still standing behind him. Stiles turns to look up at him, realizing they are ridiculously close together and recognizing the look in the older boy's eyes. Derek looks uncomfortable in his own skin, like it's a woolen sweater he can't quite get off. The desperate insecurity feels like chewing on glass.

"Let's go for a walk," Stiles hears himself say.

Derek's eyes are surprisingly intense when they fix on him, but there's no heat or malice behind there, just curiosity. "Why?" he asks.

Explanations feel stupid and jumbled, but Stiles opens his mouth anyway because that's what he does and says, "You were looking at the woods before, I thought you might want to…" and trails off because then he gets it.

Derek's lips are tight when the younger boy looks up at him with eyes wider and more vulnerable than they have any right to be, and grits his teeth because he's expecting sympathy and well-wishing and is pleasantly surprised when all Stiles does is shrug helplessly at him, admitting he has no idea what to do either. Something unclenches, just a little, in Derek's chest and he nudges Stiles' shoulder.

"Let's go," he says and turns and heads for the door because he's good at that. The woods are something he understands. They're easy, dark, and go for miles and if he wanders into the heart of them no one can hear him when he howls into the thick underbrush.

In the kitchen Stiles hesitates for only a second, looking to Laura as if asking for permission, and she waves them away and rinses the dish she's spent the entire time scrubbing spotless. She tells the younger boy to go and promises to make sure the sheriff doesn't stay up all night, and it isn't until she hears the door make two consecutive bangs that her shoulders sag and she puts the dish down, bracing her weight on the sink. Hanging her head she squeezes her eyes shut and doesn't have to see them to know they're red.

Stiles shoves his arms through the sleeves of his hoodie and stumbles when it goes over his head, nearly tripping, but a large hand clamps onto one of his biceps and keeps him upright with a quiet huff that could have been either annoyance or amusement. Pulling the hood down around his throat Stiles shoots him the weakest grin he's ever produced. Derek's face spasms like it wants to return the expression but can't quite figure out how to replicate it, then he turns and heads for the woods, falling into a smooth gait that Stiles has to rush to keep up with. There's a part of him that thinks they make an odd pair. Tall and already budding into chiseled muscle, Derek is all about poise and grace; still growing, awkward, and gangly, Stiles does his best to make himself invisible because that's just easier. Nearly tripping again and shakes out of his head, and this time Derek makes a sound at him that sounds like growling. It makes the boy's chest twist.

"Did you just growl at me?" he asks, caught somewhere between amusement, shock, and a faint scrap of recognition and faded memories that tell him he knows that sound.

Surprise flits across Derek's face before embarrassment chases it away and he turns sharply, shoulders squared, and struts ahead with a half-minded desire to lose Stiles in the trees they're coming up on. He can hear the boy's startled chuckle and the displacement of leaves in his attempt to catch up.

"You did, didn't you?" he asks, glancing at Derek sideways.

The older boy's face twists sourly and his eyebrows furrow as he responds, "Maybe."

Silence descends then, but it's different than the one that Stiles is used to swallowing him up. The one that wraps around the two boys isn't empty and hopeless but rather full, brimming with questions, curiosities, a desire to descend beneath each other's skulls and discover what lays beneath, and the strangest part is the companionship. Somewhere in the back of his mind Stiles remembers his mother telling him about how she and the sheriff met once. _Grief,_ she had said, _brings the strangest people together._ Glancing at Derek again, Stiles quirks an eyebrow and receives a similar response.

Derek stops suddenly, frozen, nose pushing into the air as if scenting it and another faint surge of recognition hits Stiles. Freezing because then he can hear it too, Stiles goes stock still and every inch of him quivers with the half-remembered need to turn and run as far and fast as he can in the opposite direction. Next to him, his companion starts to growl again, lightly, as eyes appear at the edge of the woods. They flicker in the partial darkness and Stiles is transfixed by the gold in them. It happens so fast he can't quite remember it later, but Derek pushes him away and snarls a breathy, tormented run at him before turning back to the eyes. There's no time for Stiles to see the form they belong to explode from the bushes. Instincts he doesn't understand have already kicked in and he runs.

The oxygen in his chest builds up until it burns, never quite all the way out or all the way in as his heart hammers in his ribcage. Legs already too long to control, Stiles lengthens his stride and lets his feet fly underneath him and stumbles only once or twice when the sodden leaves twist beneath his sneakers and almost send him sprawling, but he recovers. It isn't quite terror that grips him, but it's close.

They wander together in silence, each taking in the chill of the gathering dusk and the fading light reflecting off the forming dewdrops in the grass beneath their feet. Frost is thick in the air. Stiles lifts his head up and lets out a slow exhalation that isn't quite a sigh. Allowing himself the small moment of serenity, he feels his defenses begin to waver and, ultimately, fall in on themselves. When he opens his eyes, he is standing still on the edges of a clearing.

Derek, who stands a foot or two away, is staring at him. His eyes are hooded and dark, watching the younger boy with an indiscernible look, and when Stiles catches his stare, Derek looks away from him to the center of the clearing.

Stiles follows his gaze and feels something in his chest constrict.

The center of the clearing is dominated almost entirely by a giant black tree. It's branches hang low and sprawl out like twisted roots, devoid of any leaves or buds, and they seem almost to beckon to him. The trunk is convoluted and leans slightly off to the right. At the very bottom is an opening that leads into the seemingly hollow center but with the fading light, Stiles can't see into it. Something about the tree feels off. Stiles can feel Derek trembling, his eyes now fixed to the tree, and when Stiles can no longer resist the pull it has on him and steps around Derek, the boy's arm shoots out to block his path. His palm rests over Stiles' heart for a second before his hand drops. As he continues forward, Stiles can feel him look helplessly at his back.

There is a moment when Stiles thinks that Derek won't follow him. He's sure that he'll turn around and find Derek gone, having given in to the sensations plaguing him and left the clearing, but when he pauses to glance back, Derek is there. He looks pale and like his skin is ready to jump off him at any moment, but he's cautiously picking his way to Stiles' side. When he reaches it, he glances at the boy before shrugging and continuing forward.

Stiles is, for a moment, frozen to the spot. Something, he thinks, important has just happened, although he can't figure out why he thinks that. He shrugs and follows Derek, content for him to take the lead.

When they reach the hollow, awe and something he can't quite explain worm into Stiles as he settles on his knees and braces his hands against either side of the hollow's opening, leaning in just a touch to examine the insides. It isn't the first time he's seen the tree or rested within, but he's never had the chance to really examine it before. The darkness that seems to permeate the hollow is complete in a way that he's unfamiliar with and unsure how to contend, so he leans back and rifles through his pockets until he finds his phone, turns the brightness up, and turns the screen toward the black. It provides an almost perfect ray into the darkness. Stiles examines the interior, noting it looks as if it were polished smooth and unnaturally pale, even for wood, as if the tree's skeleton was being laid bare for them to see. It makes his chest constrict.

Leaning in again, he inhales quietly, flaring his nostrils to catch everything he can with his senses only to push himself back with surprise when he catches the rank of sulfur. Clapping his hands to his nose, he exhales sharply. It's a vain attempt to rid himself of the stench and has caught Derek's attention. The older boy comes to Stiles' side, hands outstretched as if to assist him but frozen as if he isn't quite sure how to, but he hovers there in his indecision long enough that Stiles smiles at him gratefully. Derek retreats and huffs, brow furrowing, glancing curiously at the abnormally large girth of the trunk.

Knuckles brushing the dry bark, he traces his way around the tree until he is back at the entrance to the hollow where is Stiles crouched, peering inside again. Derek joins him and examines the markings the younger boy points out to him. They look ancient and Stiles identifies them as runes, calling out the names of a few and piecing a word or two together. It isn't until the quiet has stretched for a few minutes that Derek glances over. Next to him the younger boy's expression has turned hard as he scrutinizes a jumble of runes, and Derek can almost hear the cogs turning in his head to the exact moment where they stop and something clicks in Stiles' eyes. The boy's lips move soundlessly for a moment, as if testing the words. When he turns to look at his companion, he does so slowly and with purpose.

"Derek," he begins and points to a crude wolf head in the hollow, "do you believe in werewolves?"

The question is so far from what the older boy is expecting that for a moment he can't respond. Although he won't ever admit it, it was probably the deer-in-the-headlights stare that tipped the other boy off because Derek just couldn't think of anything to say. Stiles just gapes at him, mouth opening and closing. The older boy flinches a little, curling into himself. It never even occurs to him to dissuade Stiles from the notion.

The voice he uses to confirm his suspicion is tiny, "Really?"

"Really?" Derek echoes in the same disbelieving tone.

There's no judgment and the older boy still doesn't see what Stiles is getting at, so he opens an eye and glances at him curiously, finding that he's returned his gaze to the hollow's inside once more, seemingly transfixed with whatever he's found. Derek leans in and follows Stiles' gaze.

"What is it?" he asks.

Stiles doesn't answer and reaches for the rune with outstretched fingers instead. His skin just barely brushes it when it flares up, bright, hot, and blue, and Stiles snatches his digits away to cradle them at his chest. Derek's nostrils flare at the scent of singed skin. Stiles pulls his fingers away and examines them carefully, noting the mild burns on his index and middle fingers before glancing at the rune again. When he reaches for it a second time Derek's hand shoots out and grips his wrist. Eyebrows climbing, Stiles stares at him.

"I'm not going to touch it," he assures Derek, who snorts and releases him reluctantly.

Fingers outstretched and palm perfectly flat in the air, Stiles hovers over the mark hopelessly intrigued by the warmth that spreads across his hand. Lips parting a little, his eyes narrow. Derek, scrutinizing the boy, can only marvel at the black curiosity he sees there and wonders how he's managed to stay alive as long as he has. That kind of relentless thirst he can see budding in Stiles' eyes, it's the kind that he's seen consume more than one, some of them better men and women than the this little boy could ever hope to be. Suddenly there's a hand around his wrist and Stiles is pulling his hand toward the rune. It sparks when Derek's skin comes into accidental contact with it and warms, but rather than burn him it wraps him in a satisfying warmth that makes his skin tingle and his eyes react. There's a surprised shuffle next to him and when Derek turns, Stiles is transfixed.

"Your…" Stiles whispers, "…your eyes…"

The beta whines.

Stiles opens his mouth to say something, anything really, when his cellphone rings. The jaunty tune rolls through the woods and does little to break the moment, as Stiles can't tear his gaze away from the blue that has haunted his dreams for nearly seven years. Eventually though, he shoves a hand in his pocket and fishes out his phone. Without breaking eye contact he picks up and listens to a panicked jumble on the other end, one which he recognizes as his father's and can't focus on until he says, "Laura's missing."

Derek's nostrils flare and his gaze is far too intense.

"What?" Stiles asks after a moment.

"She isn't in the house, didn't leave a note, and the car's gone. Is she with you?"

Derek reaches for the phone, hesitates, and then drops his hand when a branch cracks behind them. Before he's completely turned around, something slams into Stiles and knocks the wind from him as he goes flying, colliding with the ground a few feet away from the hollow and Derek.

Flat on his back, all he can do is breathe as his vision swims and his ears are filled with loud sounds he can't quite make out. He thinks there's growling and shouting, but growling doesn't make sense. There's a snarling mass of fur closing in on him, treading softly, paws too large to be a coyote's, but the shape is distinctly lupine. Stiles squints at it, head ringing.

"Stop it Laura, stop it!"

The snarling mass before him hesitates and the red that has completely enveloped its eyes has Stiles paralyzed, less from terror and more from fascination because the word werewolf keeps bouncing around his head. The monster is a sleek, black body set on four long lets and held up by four massive paws. One of them is pressing down on Stiles chest, so he gets a good look at it and thinks distantly that it's almost the size of his head. Mouth parting, Stiles thinks his heart has stopped. The thunder in his ears is actually his heart, he realizes. Letting out a sharp breath and closing his eyes from the sight, Stiles counts his blessings because he's never been lucky and this would be a great time to start getting in on that.

Derek comes rushing out of the woods, hair a tangled, insane mess on his head and his eyes doing crazy things like flashing that intense, chilling blue that Stiles remembers distantly from his childhood and, he thinks suddenly, from only minutes before.

Fangs and claws unsheathed, Derek lunges and barrels into the mass of fur and darkness and teeth above Stiles, knocking it away. He gathers up the little Stilinski and hunches over him protectively. For Stiles, it's the first time he's been touched like that since his mother's death, and he curls into the older boy's arms instinctively burying his face in Derek's chest. In doing so, he tries to block out the current circumstances. The loud, grating sounds coming out of the beast's throat make it hard to ignore them though, and when Stiles looks up again, it's gone. In its place is Laura, naked and bloody, with eyes like blood oranges.

It takes Stiles exactly twelve point eleven seconds to connect the monstrous beast from moments ago to the young woman before him. It takes him six point three seconds after that to realize that maybe werewolves aren't just flights of fancy, either that or he's having a really fucking bad trip, and then he has to wonder what kind of world he lives in when the second is less likely than the first.

Stiles licks his lips and then asks, "…Laura?"

The young woman looks up at him slowly, as if her head hurts her, and Stiles finds himself staring down eyes that look like rubies in firelight, or blood spilled at dusk, and he swallows thickly.

"Laura, it's me, it's…" his voice breaks and he hates himself for it, "it's Stiles."

Her eyes, although still mostly flat and void, flicker for a moment. Derek, bleeding profusely from his shoulder, slinks forward to wrap her up in his arms and whisper softly in her ear as she shudders. Stiles' eyes are fixed on the growing stain on the other boy's body.

"Derek…" he whispers, "you're bleeding."

Then the panic breaks.

"Derek you're bleeding, holy fuck, shit, dude you need help, holy fuck, no," Stiles is sitting up without knowing how he got there, trembling from his ears to his toes, his vision swimming, his voice too high-pitched to be normal. A dry, distant part of his mind observes that he's having a panic attack. Then suddenly he can't breathe. The air that makes it in rasps, feels dry, burns, and he coughs on it, shuddering, collapsing in on himself in a vague attempt to create either privacy or protection. He isn't sure which it is.

Then suddenly there are arms around his shoulders. Stiles is looking in to two perfectly lucid red eyes, commanding and bright, and there are blue ones just over his right shoulder. A nose is buried in his neck and Laura's hands are on his face.

"Stiles," Derek whispers in his ear, "breathe."

Laura echoes her brother. "Stiles, I need you to breathe for me. Can you do that?"

Head spinning, Stiles starts to shake his head, but her eyes have captured his. When he's staring into them, it doesn't seem so difficult. She keeps talking to him, low and soft, and he tries to obey the unbearable compulsion to follow her instructions. When he's managing soft, short inhalations, it doesn't seem so hard. Derek's fingers tighten on his shoulders and he sucks in a sharp, full breath, instantly forcing it back out, but then he manages another and Laura's smile is encouraging. Derek doesn't let go until Stiles can breathe normally without effort.

With his legs folded Indian-style, Stiles listens numbly to Laura's explanation.

"Does the word Lycanthromy mean anything to you?"

Stiles' throat constricts, "It means werewolf."

Laura nods, "Right. It does. Do you know what werewolves look like?"

The Internet has always been Stiles' best friend (sorry not sorry Scott).

"They look like people—just regular humans. According to modern mythology it takes a full moon to transform them, but if you look at older accounts of werewolves, that isn't true. A full moon _forces_ a shift. They can, hypothetically, turn whenever they want."

Laura's eyebrows raise and she shares a measured look with her brother, one that tells Stiles that he's hit the nail on the head and she's extremely impressed. Pressing his lips together, he shrugs before continuing.

"In old Irish mythology they're considered protectors. They have packs, like families but… well, most human families are never quite as close or important as a pack. Most werewolves are stable. They're really just another race of people but humans…" Stiles hesitates, his mother's words ringing in the back of his head.

"Humans have always been afraid of what they don't understand, and they never saw it that way, but werewolves are just as complicated. You have good ones, bad ones, ones who will die for the pack, the ones who can't be trusted…"

Stiles trails off because Laura's eyes are wide and she's staring at him. When he stops talking, her eyes flick to Derek. He shrugs.

"You seem to know an awful lot," she murmurs to him, raising an eyebrow.

"My mom—," Stiles breaks off because he can't talk about her. He just can't.

Luckily though, Laura's eyes widen again and then she looks sadly at Stiles' knees, eyebrows drawing together in pain. Her lips press together and she nods. Derek rumbles unhappily behind Stiles. With a start, the younger boy realizes that Derek's chest is pressed into his back and they've essentially molded together, enough so that the vibrations from Derek's vocal cords slip through Stiles.

Laura presses a hand to her face, "Yeah. That makes sense." She runs the hand down her face and smiles thinly at Stiles. "She was a wonderful lady, Stiles, I'm so…" her voice breaks. "I'm so damn sorry we couldn't protect her."

Stiles starts.

"What?"

But Laura doesn't answer. Instead she leans forward, her eyes flicker to life and the red is utterly captivating. There's something different in her stare, but the compulsion is back, and Stiles, for as much as he tries, can't find the will to fight it.

"You've had a rough day Stiles," She murmurs, reaching out to brush her hand through his hair, "you should get some rest."

There's a soft roar in his ears, but then the black fades in and there's nothing else.

Two sunken depressions in his mattress call Stiles to consciousness and he grumbles a little, clutching his pillow and blinking blearily in the pre-dawn light at the two figures flanking either side of him. One leaned closer and dark hair brushed his face. It's Laura who leaned in and pressed a kiss to his temple, squeezing on of his fingers apologetically as she began to whisper to him things he would only half-remember a few hours later. Derek sat with a straight back and the wooden expression softened when Stiles curled into him.

"Stiles, I'm so sorry but Derek and I have to leave," Laura was telling him. "We don't know when we'll be back, but we will, so you have to wait for us okay? You have to hang in there because we'll come back."

Tongue thick with sleep still, Stiles couldn't help the hint of a whine that crept into his voice. "Why?" he whispered, voice cracking.

Laura looks like her heart might break.

"I can't tell you, but we have to. We wouldn't leave if we didn't absolutely have to."

Derek interrupts his sister and leans close to Stiles, so close the boy can feel his breath on his face and smell the faintly spicy aroma that seems to cling to him. Brushing his hand through Stiles' hair once, Derek tells him, "We don't want to leave."

"So don't."

It's so quiet and simple and the siblings think their hearts do break a little, but Derek shushes the panic he can sense already beginning to bloom in the younger boy's chest by running his hand through his hair again and pressing his thumb to the spot just above Stiles' temple. The contact is gentle and Stiles sighs. Derek's overly large hand cups the side of the teenager's face until he drifts back to sleep only seconds later.

When he wakes up for the second time they're gone.

Pushing back the covers and ignoring the fact he isn't really dressed, Stiles jumps out of bed and distantly hears his door slam against the wall as he takes the stairs two at a time on the way down. The living room is empty and so is the kitchen. The air mattress has been deflated and packed away and the blankets are folded. At the kitchen table already, the sheriff mechanically takes a sip from his empty coffee cup and seems surprised to find no coffee in it, only to repeat the same series of motions a few moments later. Eventually, he drops the paper he's pretending to read and buries his face in his hands. Stiles half hides behind the doorway and watches him.

The world is, in fact he later decides, most definitely ending.


	4. All the Broken Bodies Raise Your Bones

Neither Laura nor Derek ever call, email, or send a letter. They're just gone and Stiles feels like another rift in his life has opened up because everyone who understands is gone, or in Scott's case, absolutely atrocious at gaging what his best friend's new needs are. There's only so much he can do. Stiles appreciates the effort, he really does, but after about four awkward attempts on Scott's part to convey that should Stiles ever need anything like to talk about it, Stiles tells him to give up. The result is that Scott is just there, sort of, mostly. They never talk about it and his best friend seems honestly relieved. The sheriff drops into his son's world every now and again, and it's, nearly to the T of Scott's attempts, mostly entirely unsuccessful.

Years go by in this awkwardly frozen phase of transition (three to be exact), and then Stiles gets a poorly timed phone call while attempting to eavesdrop on his father's private conversation. Pressed against the wall next to the den's closed door, Stiles nearly drops the glass cup he's attempting to maneuver into a proper eavesdropping position when his pocket starts to vibrate and all sound in the room goes dead. As Stiles fumbles with the glass and his pocket, the door opens. The sheriff, looking as worn and weary as the Night of Reckoning (as Stiles has come to refer to it as), rubs his eyes and stares wearily down at the son he doesn't know what to do with, and sometimes doesn't even recognize. Refusing to feel guilty, Stiles answers his phone and doesn't look at the sheriff.

Licking his lips he says, "Hello?" as awkwardly as physically possible.

The voice on the other end is not one he ever expected to hear again. "I need your help."

Narrowly managing to avoid dropping the phone, Stiles fumbles with it and then pushes it against his chest, still refusing to glance at his father, and then puts it against his ear again and shoves himself up the wall roughly and stalks away from the sheriff, the den—and when he wrenches the door open and doesn't bother to shut it—the house. The other side waits patiently as all of this happens. Standing in the middle of his walkway, Stiles tears a hand across his scalp and then covers his head with that same hand. When he does finally manage to say something, it comes out more sarcastic than he intends.

"Well hello to you too," he says and then he can't stop, "it's been what, three years? Damn how time flies when your life sucks. How's your sister by the way? I imagine packing up and leaving did wonders for you guys."

Derek doesn't even growl. "Laura's missing, I think… I'm pretty sure she's…"

_Dead_ hangs in the air.

Stiles tears another hand across his buzz cut and thinks he swears unintelligibly for a moment or two, and then presses a hand to his mouth so he can shut up and listen to Derek explain. After a moment, the older man does. It comes out quietly, roughly, and the story that unfolds is painfully domestic and full of holes, but Stiles lets Derek tell him about New York and Chicago; England; Texas; Michigan; and finally Beacon Hills, California. When Derek arrives at the phone call that made Laura leave in the middle of the night, all Stiles can think is _that's a lot of Chinese food_ because it is and also because what else can he possibly think about the nomadic asshole on the phone with him, the same one who thinks his last remaining batch of family is a corpse in the woods somewhere. It's more than either of them can bear. Stiles closes his eyes and thinks, _haven't we seen enough death?_

"Okay," Stiles whispers into his phone, "give me a few minutes. Are you at…" he chokes. "the house?" the Hale house?

Derek breathes evenly. "Yeah."

"Okay," Stiles repeats and hangs up the phone.

He stares at the ended call for long enough that the sheriff catches up with him and demands to know what's going on.

"It's nothing dad," and Stiles will never admit that his voice caught on the word.

The drive to Derek's is short and filled with silence because Stiles doesn't have the energy to turn the radio on. He feels like someone's thrust him back into limbo. Derek, he thinks, must be in rougher shape than him because it isn't Stiles' sister who's probably dead somewhere in the woods. It's Derek's sister that died, probably alone.

They rendezvous at the house and then span out into the woods. Each is armed with a flashlight, a cellphone, and Stiles takes a bat because well, truthfully, you can never be too careful.

He walks for about an hour before he catches a hint of something. It smells oddly sweet and sounds like flies. The scent of rot hits him before he sees the corpse. It's the scent of decay just beginning to set in, when the bugs have laid their first few hundred eggs and only the outer layers of skin have been disturbed. Pressing his lips together and muscling through his gag reflex, Stiles follows the scent. Derek is on the other side of the forest, but Stiles screams, he'll hear it. When the smell is so strong Stiles almost can bear it, he knows he's close. He pushes aside a bush and finds it.

It's Laura. _Half_ of Laura. Stiles almost drops his flashlight in a blustered attempt to cover his mouth before he spews his bile all over her mangled corpse, managing to turn just in time to deposit it into the bushes instead. There's a crash behind him and Derek stumbles through the underbrush. Still gagging on his own vomit, Stiles doesn't have time to tell him to stop, to not look, to wait, so Derek stops dead and looks like he's going to throw up too. Chest heaving, Stiles closes his eyes and tries not to remember what his mother's corpse looked like in the crash. He takes a deep breath and tries to forget about the blood, which is mostly unsuccessful when he can still _smell_ it.

Derek drops to his knees and starts to tremble. It never even occurs to Stiles that Derek might lose control and kill him (probably only mostly accidentally) when he rushes behind the man and drops to his own knees, pulling Derek into his arms and against his chest, wrapping his arms around his stomach and holding him through the tremors. When Derek doesn't slit his throat, Stiles counts it as a win and throws in the vague notion that he appreciates it too. It's dark by the time they get back to the house.

Derek sinks onto the bowing front porch of his burnt shell of a family home and covers his face with his hands, and buries both of them in his knees, staring at the open eyes of his dead sister through his fingers with as much sightlessness as she him. It breaks Stiles' heart a little. Laura won't need a large grave, but she'll need a deep one to keep away the dogs, so Stiles hefts a shovel in the fading light and pulls up his first clump of dirt. Tossing it to the side, almost misses Derek's voice. It's low and rough, but in a strangled sort of way.

"Stiles…"

The boy turns to look at his companion, halfway through retrieving another shovelful of dirt, and his eyebrows shoot to his forehead because can't Derek see he's busy trying to put her to rest (and also get rid of the evidence)? When the older man doesn't say anything else, Stiles returns to his task. After a moment Derek comes up behind him and pulls the other shovel out of the ground, testing its weight in his hands for a moment, weighing something carefully in his mind, before beginning on the other side of the small grave Stiles plotted out. They work together quickly, silent except for the grief stretching between them and the sound of churning earth.

"We have to find the rest of her," Derek says quietly after they've made a hole big enough.

It sits open for a while longer as Stiles and the beta sit quietly next to each other, gazing absently at anywhere but Laura's corpse, both trying to think of something to say to salvage the obvious rift between them. They were friends once, briefly, and grief…

Stiles thinks of his mother's voice.

"You need to lay low for a while. If the cops find her first, they're gonna ID ever eventually, and they'll suspect you. If you're not in town, they can't, right?" Stiles says through squinted eyes as he watches the sun slip beneath the trees.

It's sound logic, but Derek shakes his head.

"I've been all over town trying to catch her scent. People know I'm back."

Well, Stiles thinks, shit. Then it hits him and because Derek and he were friends once, he swallows the mild outrage and sudden guilt that follow his idea. Scott will forgive him because they're still friends.

"So I've got this friend and he's not the brightest bulb in town," Stiles begins with a quirk to his lips, "and we could, you know, go exploring tonight."

Derek doesn't move for a second, then he blinks and looks at the boy next to him. The silence stretches between them, but if Stiles thinks there's a little less grief than before, he doesn't say anything about it and if Derek leans into his side a little and rumbles quietly as the dark settles in, well, he won't say anything about that either. The moon is well on its way to rising when Stiles slips off the porch and walks a few steps down the driveway. He hesitates and half-turns to watch Derek turn to look at his sister.

Lips pressing together, Stiles turns away and ignores the feel of Derek's eyes on his back.

Neither of them notice the yellow eyes on the edge of the property that narrow, or the head that cocks curiously to the side, but Derek does hear the slight ripple of a growl waft up from the trees. His head snaps up as Stiles vanishes from sight down the driveway. There's nothing there. He scans the trees, squinting, eyes flashing blue for better vision but he doesn't see anything. Slipping off the porch he crouches next to his sister and whispers quietly to her body.

"Stars above, moon within, the raging fire has been quenched, so with it—,"

The ancient words of a burial ritual he only mostly remembers slip from his lips and the eyes vanish.

Stiles gets down to his jeep—parked a few feet from the road—before he realizes that with an omega running around it could be dangerous, so he pulls out his phone and sends a quick, short text to Derek, just to be safe. It might not do any good, but better safe than sorry, right?

_If something happens call Deaton._

For all his stand-apart watcher attitude, he's actually useful when it comes to the supernatural, something Stiles has had to come to face more than once. That done he slips his phone into his pocket, freezing when he hears a faint, distant snap of dry twigs beneath—presumably—footsteps. Locking in place, his heart thunders in his chest. Despite his insistence that he remain perfectly still, his body trembles in spite of his desires, and Stiles only prays nothing's actually out there.

If he screams, he knows, Derek will hear it. There's an odd comfort in that passing thought and the roaring in his ears dies down enough for him to listen. Aside from the nighttime grumbling of nature, there's nothing. Pressing his lips together he keeps his eyes open, edging to his jeep as he fishes around in his pocket for his keys, keeping his back flat against the car as he unlocks it and slips inside. As all this is accomplished without incident he breathes, just a little.

It's a short drive to Scott's, but Stiles takes extra precautions and drives slowly enough that anything leaping out in front of the car could be avoided, and his eyes never stop moving as they swing from side to side to the front then flick to the rear-view, where he narrows his eyes at an approaching light. The car behind him passes him and is gone in seconds.

Stiles breathes even more easily when he pulls into Scott's driveway.

Clearly, the best way to get Scott to listen to him is to climb up onto his roof and get at him through the window, which is precisely what Stiles does—or, what he attempts anyway. His foot comes down on a loose shingle and he slips. It's Stiles though, so he doesn't just slip. His ankle twists underneath him and he has a moment of pure terror as he flails on the edge of the roof before, tragically and gracelessly, he plunges over the side of it. Then, also because he's Stiles, his ankle is wrapped up in the climbing vines when he goes over. Jerked to a rough stop, his shout is cut short when Scott comes around the corner with a raised bat.

Staring it down and raising his hands like he didn't expect such a reaction, Stiles flails upside down as his best friend rolls his eyes and then snaps back to attention. Distantly, the paler boy observes that a lapse in defense could end with death. Instead, he grins and waves his arms enthusiastically, explaining that his father got a call about a body in the woods and well, wouldn't it be fun if they went out and found it first? Scott's eyebrows raise a little and he half smiles just thinking about it.

"Come on man," Stiles tells him, "let's go find a body!"

Scott's concerned face spreads into a slow smile and he lowers the bat, looking far more excited about the prospect of trouncing through the woods looking for the other half of Stiles' abandonment issue nightmare than perhaps he should. Stiles turns away from him and flips out his phone.

_He agreed,_ he sends to Derek and tries to choke down his guilt.

It's a long process but then goddamn actual end does eventually happen, and when it does Stiles thinks that he should have predicted it. As he and Scott stumble through the woods, chests heaving, running from something they can't see and trying to avoid the policemen combing the woods in search of a dead body, Stiles realizes he's an idiot. Scott's asthma drives them apart. White fills his eyes and he runs when his friend can't, feeling the ground give way with each pounding footstep and when he ducks behind a tree his feet sink in a little. Aside from the racket in his chest, he can't hear anything. Stiles takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the glare of the flashlights, trying to close his ears off from the sound of his father calling Scott out. There's suspicion in the sheriff's voice and Stiles stuffs a hand in his mouth.

"You're sure you're out here alone?" the sheriff asks.

Stiles bites down. It takes a few moments but then his heart starts to slow.

When Scott doesn't check in and Derek _does,_ Stiles knows it's come. It's the end. A rouge, Derek says, is in town and Laura's dead, and Scott was bit because Derek can smell it, and Stiles just covers his face with his hands. Scott's his best friend, his _only_ friend and he couldn't… he couldn't keep him safe. God he had one fucking job and he couldn't even do that.

Monday morning rolls around and Stiles can't believe he's doing this. He's telling his best friend in the whole wide world that he's been bitten by a werewolf and has, thusly, contracted the lupine virus from which there is no return. Nostrils flaring, he opens his mouth. It comes out more sarcastic than he intends and Scott takes it as a joke. There's a split second where Stiles isn't sure if he should let him live in that ignorance a day or two more, but then he remembers the full moon is only a few days away. Licking his lips and scrunching his nose he takes hold of Scott's arm and yanks him away from the front steps. Scott protests and then catches a look at Stiles' face. He quiets almost instantly, like a small child who has come to recognize the foul outbursts of a parent, and Stiles tries to quell the pounding in his chest. Shoving Scott against the side of the building, he narrows his eyes at him.

"Scott, buddy, I love you, but you need to listen to me," he says.

The other boy's eyebrows go up and he opens his mouth to say something along the lines of, _I am listening to you Stiles, what are you talking about?_ Stiles cuts him off with a hand and shakes his head.

"Scott, _listen,_" He insists, "you're a werewolf."

Leaning in, as if sharing some private joke, Scott says, "Um, Stiles, werewolves aren't real," with the biggest, most idiotic grin he can muster and it just makes his friend want to beat him. Pushing his hands against his forehead, Stiles thinks. It's a long moment before Scott interrupts the silence to ask another question, which he only gets partway out because Stiles' eyes light up and he silences him again.

"Scott, shut up." Stiles says and pulls out his phone.

By the third ring he's positively certain no one's going to pick up, but then, by some miracle previously unknown to the mortal races, a gruff voice rumbles on the other side of the phone with a ridiculously sullen, "Hello?"

"I need your help," is all Stiles can manage before he hits the ground.

Derek's voice is suddenly loud through the phone and he's shouting, asking for Stiles, but the boy is unconscious, his head lolling to the side and his teeth bleeding. Scott makes a pass for the lithe man whose hands are clutching the boy, but he's knocked backwards faster than he can really follow and when he's stumbled to the ground his breath is knocked out of him too. Sucking in a rough breath of air, Scott has a moment to realize he doesn't feel like his inhaler. He fumbles for it anyway and takes in a long drag. The increasingly upset voice on the phone draws his attention and he reaches forward with a trembling hand to grab it.

"…hello?" he asks.

"Who is this? Where's Stiles?"

The voice is rough and demanding but Scott can hear the thinly veiled concern.

"Stiles he… I don't know. Something grabbed him. He's gone."

Silence doesn't have even a moment to build on the other side of the line.

"Who are you?"

Scott licks his lips before answering because this feels serious enough that he should answer straight. "My name's Scott McCall. I'm Stiles' best friend."

The voice on the other end hesitates. "Scott? You're the one who got attacked?"

Drawing his eyebrows together, the boy frowns and glances at the phone for a moment before saying, "Yeah. How'd you know that?"

The voice dismisses it. "Stiles told me. Listen, I need you to go to the vet."

Scott draws his brow together even tight and asks, "Deaton's? Why? Shouldn't we be looking for Stiles?"

A drawn out inhale hisses on the other end of the line and the voice sounds ragged. "I can't explain it right now. Stiles said that if anything happened I was to call Deaton. Get to the clinic, Scott. I'm not asking."

The line goes dead before Scott has a chance to ask who he was that he had a right to demand things, and then he remembers that Stiles has just been _kidnapped_ and he should probably go to Stiles' dad. Scott shifts from foot to foot, face scrunched. Just as he is almost convinced to go and find the sheriff, he realizes there had been something wrong with the assailant's eyes. They'd been yellow, and he'd smelled… off, like rotting meat and flies, or something hung out in the sun for too long. Deliberating for just a second longer, Scott lets out an exaggerated sigh and slips into the woods.

School will have to wait.

There's a black Camaro parked when Scott careens into the clinic's parking lot but he barely pays it any mind. He finds Derek already at the back door.

"Deaton!" Derek roars as he pounds it. "Get out here!"

Scott runs up and grabs the man's shoulder saying, "Dude, calm down. It's way after hours. He probably not even here."

Derek eyes flicker when he looks at the boy, who swears they were blue for an instant, and growls, "Oh he's here. I can hear him." He turns back to the door and slams his fist on it again, causing the glass to groan underneath his skin and a foray of minute slivers to wind up through the edges. "You hear that, Deaton? I can _hear_ you in there!"

Less than a second later a light goes on inside and Scott would be lying if he said he wasn't impressed. Deaton's worn, slightly weary face appears in the glass above the door and he unlocks it but doesn't bother to open it, turning away even as Derek wrenches open the door. Once he's inside, he doesn't shout. He does, however, follow the vet's heels as they wind their way to the back office of the clinic, Scott following sullenly, still not sure why he's even there. Deaton pause as he unlocks his office door and turns to the teenager. He blinks.

"Scott? What are you…" he glances at Derek and his eyebrows shoot up. "I see."

"I'm here for Stiles," Scott pipes in, feeling strongly that he's missed something, "he's been kidnapped!"

Deaton's eyebrows raise another impossible scant centimeters and he looks at Derek for confirmation, and the man gives a terse nod, every muscle in his body outlined with stress and anxiety that is, presumably, for Stiles' wellbeing. It all makes no sense to Scott who's never even heard of Derek. Stiles never mentioned him.

"Kidnapped?" Deaton says again, confused. "Who was there?"

The weight of Derek's stare on him is something Scott doesn't quite understand, but it makes him shift uncomfortably and he raises a hand self-consciously, wilting under the scrutiny of both Derek and Deaton. The vet frowns and opens his office door, ushering them inside. Once in, he locks it behind them.

"Scott, I need you to tell me everything you can about the kidnapper. It's very important. Can you do that?"

Frowning and disliking being treated like a small child, Scott nods. "They—_he,_ he was maybe about my height? A little taller? Darker skin, dark hair—_black_ hair. He was thin but not the way Stiles is though, and his eyes…" Scott trails off as his own widen at the memory. "His eyes, they were yellow, the irises though not the whole eye and he…" it's hard to place the scent, to sort through the vagueness of the memory. It happened so fast that Scott only has a hazy recollection. "He smelled kinda like rotting fruit? Like raw meat? Maybe… copper?"

"Blood. You smelled blood." Derek's voice is soft and strangled.

"Yellow eyes, Derek, "Deaton says thoughtfully, "bitten, not born and probably rouge."

"An omega?" the other man asks, "Can you be sure?"

After a moment, the vet squints and shrugs as he shakes his head. "No, but I haven't caught wind of anything lately, so it's likely. It isn't impossible someone's been covering their tracks but…"

"The beta's sloppy," Derek finishes. "Why would someone cover their tracks only to leave a beta to forge a warpath through Beacon Hills?" he frowns. "Have there been any deaths?"

Again, Deaton shakes his head. "No. Nothing unusual. Actually," the vet frowns, "that in and of itself is unusual."

Derek grunts. "When was the last one?"

The vet seems only slightly hesitant when he says, "Laura."

A soft exhale escapes Derek, like he's been elbowed in the ribs, and he runs a hand down his face when he says, "Right. I'm going to pick up a trail. Call me if…"

"I will. Take Scott with you." Deaton advises him.

Derek grunts again, this time more begrudgingly and eyes the teenager who scowls at him.

"Is anybody gonna fill me in? What's going on here?"

The two men exchange a glance.

"Stiles called to ask my help with something. I assume it's you," Derek says, almost accusingly.

Deaton slips in between them smoothly and asks, "What was the last thing you and Stiles talked about?"

Scott thinks about that. "We were talking about how I got attacked by a dog last night and… well, Stiles was joking about how I was a werewolf now."

Deaton's eyes narrowed. "Joking or telling you?"

"Jo—, telling. He _told_ me I was a werewolf, but that's crazy right? Werewolves aren't real?" he frowns when no one contradicts him. "Right?"

Another disgruntled exhale escapes the grumpy stranger who seemed to know way more about Stiles than he should reasonably know. "Werewolves are real. Get over it. Stiles was kidnapped by one and we have to find him."

"But that's crazy!" Scott protests.

"Do you want Stiles to die?"

"No!" Scott shouts, aghast.

"Then we have to find him," Derek repeats patiently, his tone just short of seething and he gestures to the door, waiting for Deaton to unlock it.

The vet steps around him and unlocks the door and opens it in the same movement, smiling wanly at Scott as he follows Derek out reluctantly. The man is bristling, seeping danger. He looks like he's three seconds from flying off his rocket and murdering something small and fuzzy, and Scott frowns because this is all over Stiles. Nobody cares about Stiles that much, except his dad and maybe him. Deaton stops them.

"Oh, and Derek?"

The man turns sharply on his heel, teeth bared and he snarls under his breath, _"What?"_

Deaton is, to his credit, completely unflappable. "You might want to check in on your uncle. I hear he's made some remarkable recovery as of late."

The door slams on Derek's face and he stares at it, biting out, "What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Deaton doesn't answer.

Tearing a hand through his hair, Derek stands next to the entrance dressed in his leather jacket and sneakers, looking every inch like a boy who grew up too fast with too much on his plate and no idea where to start with it. For a brief moment, Scott feels bad for him. In the next second though, Derek turns around and fixes Scott with a cold stare. There's a long stretch of silence. Scott thinks the other man is sizing him up, eyes squinting, narrowing, and flicking back and forth appraisingly and away accordingly. The teenager shifts from side of side.

"We have to find Stiles," Derek says finally, "let's go."

Then he turns and stalks in the opposite direction of the veterinary office, leaving Scott to rush to catch up.


End file.
